Comparing My Last Duchess, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and A Woman to Her Lover

Differing Views of Male-female Relationships in Three Poems

In the three poems we experience three different views of how

male-female relationships should take place. In ‘My Last Duchess’ we

experience the view that the male should have the main role in

relationships, in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ we hear of a relationship

where the woman is in total control of the man and has all the power.

Finally in ‘A Woman to Her Lover’ we read that both men and

women should have an equal amount of power and no one should be

dominant.

In ‘My Last Duchess’ the thoughts of a very possessive and arrogant

Duke of Ferrara are shared. He expected his wife to behave in a very

conservative manner and wanted her to treat others as inferior.

The Duke shows his position of power in the poem by referring to her

as; ‘My Last Duchess’. The Duke uses the possessive pronoun ‘My’ which

shows that the Duke doesn’t want anyone else to enjoy his wife’s

company and he wants her all to himself. This shows that he has power

over his wife as he refers to her as a belonging; it also shows that

he is arrogant as well as dominant. Furthermore, we can see that the

word ‘last’ implies that the Duke had previous wives; it also suggests

that she is his duchess no more and so something must have happened to

her. As a result of this we get the impression that the Duke simply

marries then divorces, or kills, his wife just to receive her dowry,

and to get more money.

Also, we can see that when the Duke refers to the picture of his wife,

he immediately names the well known artist that painted it; “I call

that piece a wonder … ‘Frà Pandolf’”. Here we see that the Duke shows

off the fact that his painting was created by a famous artist, he may

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...her main type of imagery used is sensual imagery ‘Full beautiful’,

‘sweet moan’, here, Keats allows the reader to build up a picture of

the woman which helps the reader to visualise why the knight can be

controlled by her.

In conclusion, we can see that wherever one individual in the

relationship has had more power, whether it has been the man or woman,

the relationship has ended in a sad state of affairs. In each poem the

relationships are completely different, Browning’s poem views women as

being inferior to men, Walsh’s poem views women and men as being equal

and Keats views women as being faery’s, having supernatural powers and

dominating the man. The main inference among the three poems is that

the role of the sexes within a relationship can change, depending upon

the characters in the relationships and the amount of power each

person does posses.